


Any Old Way

by peccadilloes



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Tetralogy - Thomas Harris
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, M/M, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 08:48:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25468027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peccadilloes/pseuds/peccadilloes
Summary: Late in the night under the porch light, a soft breeze humming.5 times Will comes home after the fall and 1 time he doesn't
Relationships: Molly Graham/Will Graham, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 15
Kudos: 61





	1. After Dinner, After Dark

Oh you know how it goes. Will comes home after dinner, after dark. Covered in the scent and the scars and the marks of Hannibal, wrapped in the idea of Hannibal with the cadence of his voice wearing Will like some second skin.

Wally is asleep in his bed with his baseball glove on his nightstand and his baseball bat bedside on the floor; Molly is on the porch waiting for Will with a cold beer, her keen eyes, and Dolarhyde's bullet wounds.

"So this is what it's like," she says. "Every time Jack takes you, you'll come back like this." Which is surely just another way of saying _I know where you've been_.

The dogs either start barking like Will's a person in a predator suit -- skeleton and valves, harnsesses and jaws -- or they don't. Molly holds her hand up. "You have to tell me some things before you can come in."

"I just want to go to bed," Will almost whines.

"You can drag your balls somewhere else if that's all you want."

"Alright."

//

The list of things Molly has to know is a litany of everything Will has ever said to Abigail's ghost and then some. Each answer Will gives is an offering to the wound in his cheek. A little god whispering over the stitches to pop, the blood to leak.

What can Will tell Molly that doesn't disprove his fidelity? It doesn't matter to her like he thinks it does; it matters to her about Wally.

"Are you going to draw Hannibal here? Are you going to leave with him again? Is he going to send some deranged lunatic to my house again to try to--"

"It wouldn't be like that."

"Well, what would it be like?"

Will has never been good at confessions, but he needs one. "Hannibal wanted us to do it together," he says. "He ripped Dolarhyde's neck while I slit his stomach."

"With his teeth?"

"With what else?"

"Did you do it for him or for me? You did it for both--"

"I did it for both of you."

There's as long a pause as you can imagine. Then, "Is he following you?"

"He didn't follow me here."

Molly isn't satisfied, so Will confesses again. "He has a lot of people to kill before he starts missing me."

Molly understands to kill means _to eat_. She understands a lot of things. "Did you fuck him this time?"

"Does it matter? Please Molly, I just want some sleep."

"Shiver and sweat all over your own pillow." Molly lets Will come in. He follows her to their bed. She's set out a towel on his side.


	2. After Dinner, After Dark

Wally's grandpa and Mamamma were waiting in a rental car parked in front of the cabin the day Molly and Wally came back from Washington.

Molly felt a twist of nausea in her stomach and a hit of bile at the back of her throat. If it wasn't one thing trying to take her son, it was someone else.

"Hello Wally!" Mamamma shouted out of her rolled down window when he got out of backseat of the black SUV.

Some how Molly had agreed to let Jack Crawford drive them home.

"Just in case," Jack had said.

"In case what?"

Jack had shrugged, and Molly had hated him then -- but she was grateful to have him here now.

"That bad, huh," Jack said. He'd talked about Bella on the drive. "What do you need to me to do?"

"Walk us in and stay for coffee," Molly said.

"It's the least I can do."

Molly snorted.

"You're still angry with me, I know. Did Will ever tell you about the time he helped Hannibal Lecter stab me in the neck with a piece of glass?"

"Can't say you didn't deserve it."

"Bella tried to kill herself before it got bad. She took pills, went to Hannibal's office. He revived her. She said he wouldn't let her abandon me like that."

Together they watched Mamamma get out of the car and hug Wally. Wally's grandpa had the trunk open and was holding a tackle box he'd pulled from the top of his suitcase.

"They're going to take him no matter what I do," Molly said.

"That's kidnapping."

"Male heirs and all that."

//

Will came home on the 29th day Wally'd been in Oregon. Molly was in the kitchen putting a store-bought fish in the skillet. The way the dogs went off, she knew it was him.

"Why are you eating alone?" he said.

She could tell he sensed the way the cabin wore Wally's absence. Will looked a thousand different versions of himself all at once, and the new scar on his cheek was grotesque but handsome.

"Wally's dad's parents took him to Oregon. Got him a pony and ordered him all kinds of fishing gear." Molly watched Will take this in. He'd barely moved from the doorway. "There's sweet potato fries in the oven. You know how I get when I'm alone."

"I know how you get."

"Grab us some beers out of the fridge."

They left for Oregon the next afternoon, and it was Will who knocked on Wally's grandparents' door. Molly stood just behind him, her bangs ruffling in the breeze.

"We're here to take our son home," Will said when Mamamma opened the door.

Molly absorbed every expression that crossed Mamamma's face.


	3. Freddie

Will came home a few weeks later, his shoulder and his cheek just this side of well enough that Molly didn't puke outright.

"Hey, Hotshot," Will said. His voice was quiet.

Late in the night under the porch light, a soft breeze humming.

Molly let her smile crinkle around her eyes. "Freddie Lounds was here. Wally set her straight about it."

"Oh god," Will said.

"She wanted to know how I could even love you."

"Inexplicable to me."

"To all of us." Molly touched Will's face. "Hannibal took care of you."

"He did. He does."

"Still it's a wonder to see you alive." Molly wanted to know if it was love or something else. Like anyone, she'd had bad boyfriends before. She squinted in her mind to find them: the fuzzy edge of an exhilarating memory shaped by the thrill of doing something wrong. A string of those memories. Young, then very young. Baby fat still on her cheeks, virginity, tits squeezed over or under the shirt. Molly leaning against the bathroom sink while Will peed and brushed his teeth. Then they were in the bedroom. "Why don't you lay down on your back," Molly offered, "and I'll get on top of you."

"Take me for a ride." Will laid down on his back. Surely for Hannibal he'd also done this.

"You're my husband."

"You're my wife."


	4. Sugarloaf Key

Will said goodbye to Hannibal and took the small plane to Marathon. Molly waited for Will with Wally, who'd rooted his little body in front of her like a tree. Molly had a letter from Hannibal addressed to Will in her purse. She handed it to Will when he came off the plane.

"No secrets," she said.

_Molly is a brave girl to explore your body after everything we've done._

"Everything we haven't done," Will spat.

Later, on the beach, while Wally out of earshot scoured the sand for shells, Molly pressed Will. How had it gone? A scene Will replayed over and over in his mind -- Hannibal's cock hard against Will's thigh as Will clung to him, lips tingling and heavy tongue.


	5. Slowly, Over Time, & With Tenderness

Will woke up in the hospital. The passing of time on the clock. Glimpses of Jack and Molly in the hallway. Molly herself barely better. Still, she sat with him.

"I talked with Jack," she said. She rolled her eyes. "He told me about Bella. I think Wally's dad would've tried pills too if he weren't so ashamed and afraid of it. I miss him."

"Death comes for us all," Will said. His mouth was dry and his throat burned with it.

"Not yet," Molly said. "Not for you." She offered Will the little cup of water with a straw in it, held it while he drank. She wanted to know what happened.

"We fell," Will said.

"Not that. Between you."

"He left me here."

"He left you behind?"

Will had to breathe through it. "It takes more than luck to survive the great Red Dragon. Maybe he respects you and Wally now."

"Everything on his terms. Like Dr. Bloom and her family, waiting for him to decide."

"No, not like that. You don't owe him anything."

"What about your life?"

Will didn't say anything else. His cheek ached. His body ached. He closed his eyes and thought of Hannibal's chicken soup.

Hannibal, Hannibal, Hannibal. He left Will there, didn't he, at the emergency entrance of a hospital not far from where they brought the Dragon down.

_Are you going to abandon your wife and son?_

_I'm not sure my wounds will hold her._

_If I leave you here--_

_Nononono._

_Perhaps when your son is older._

//

Molly watched Wally let Will help him with the dogs.

"I'm getting a Coke. Do you want one?" Wally asked Will.

Will looked over Wally's head toward Molly, and he smiled a little smile. "Sure."

Only one can in the fridge. Wally divided it evenly between two plastic cups, careful to let the foam settle between pours.

//

In their bedroom and then on slow and careful walks through the woods, Will asked again and again: "Why do you stay? With me?"

Molly's reply was usually a tilted head. More of the same. "I told you, I talked to Jack. I'm so angry with him, but he's right--it's not easy."

So Will mustered up the courageous disdain to call Jack and bark at him. "What were you saying to my wife in the hospital, in the hallway?"

"I told her about Bella. Our great love."

"Uncomplicated."

"Complicated. That's what marriage is, Will. You didn't tell me Wally's dad died from cancer."

"You and Molly must have had an awful lot to talk about."

"Mostly she asked about you."

//

Wally started going to therapy every week, and sometimes Molly would go in with him. After a few months, Will went, too. The therapist was an LMFT, PhysD. A middle-aged woman in a rolling ergonimic office chair. Surrounded by books and worn couches with half-flattened pillows.

Will went with Molly one time when Wally was at school, then another time. It became a routine. The therapist used words like coupleship and scripts, and she never flinched at Will's shortness or lack of meaningful eye contact. When Molly broached the subject of Hannibal, the therapist asked Will, "Is there anything else you want Molly to know?"

After a while, Will conceded that the FBI might as well intercept all of their mail. You can never be too careful. A birthday, a Christmas. The holidays came and went. It was two years, and then three. Will called Jack.

"Have you withheld anything? From Hannibal to me?" Will asked.

Jack said, "No."


	6. And one time he doesn't

There was one time when Will finally did decide to go back home. It was after Hannibal had started eating Bedelia -- Will experienced what he'd maybe call a lucid moment. Surely he'd never known himself like he knew himself when he was with Hannibal, but that was before he met Molly. That was before Will had a wife.

It was something that always went round and round, Chiyoh calling Will Hannibal's very close friend. Alana caring and critiquing. Every woman other than Molly always questioning, questioning. Trying to know. Are you or aren't you? Is he or isn't he? Have you or haven't you? If not, when are you going to. And anyway isn't, wasn't __________ basically the equivalent of doing it bent over a table, cocks touching and assholes spread open wide.

This isn't the future, Will would tell the chorus in his mind. You can't just be with a man (a man like Hannibal). The rush to explain this has nothing to do with Molly. Quite a claim for someone who can't compartmentalize, the chorus would respond.

"Will," Hannibal said. He'd insisted on coming with him, bringing the slippery, icy terror up the gravel drive. The house was distant dark. No dogs, no signs of life. Only a heartache as raw as if Will dreamed it -- Wally offering Will a Coke and Molly stretching her legs out under the kitchen table. Probably Hannibal was thinking of broken tea cups shattering and un-shattering and shattering again.

It was clear to both of them that Molly had left.

"Perhaps she will annul the marriage," Hannibal said.

Will's neck and cheeks flushed while his stomach twisted and sank. To hold two conflicting emotions at once -- lust and catastrophic grief.

"Perhaps she knew that you would come," Will tried.

"She escaped the dragon," Hannibal offered.

"Survived."

"Is that all then?" Hannibal asked after a protracted silence.

Will turned away.

A few days later Molly and Wally, a bit bedraggled from the long plane ride back from Oregon, picked up the dogs at the kennel and headed home.

Molly insisted Wally wait in the car while she turned on the lights and checked for murderers. Some hungry quiet part of her yearning to find one -- her husband, waiting and uneasy in the dark.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks, this was fun.


End file.
